ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns two different ways of knowing: objective scientific knowledge and subjective affective knowledge, personal knowledge. Science seeks to cut through confusion and wishful thinking to a dispassionate understanding of what is what, and the detail of the scientist's knowledge of the world seems to give the insights they have into the way it works a special status. The chapter explains a preliminary way about how scientists find the beauty of what they study a stimulus for their work and a validation of their insights. It discusses some of the advances in modern science and how they relate to this fact. The chapter compares an equivalent pair of methodological approaches: scientific method and religious devotion. In fact, experiments to test hypotheses are still required, but they may well not be done by the scientist who solves the atomic structure – he or she may be too busy working towards that longed-for trip to Stockholm one December.
